A significant portion of our population takes prescribed medicine regularly for various illnesses. and conditions. Many of these people are sufficiently well to maintain all or enough of their faculties so that they are able to access and take their medication according to schedule. However, a great segment of these are elderly, or physically or mentally disabled. These people have great difficulty or are even unable to access or remember to take their medication. For example, the elderly often have a great deal of trouble opening the child-proof bottles mandated by the Poison Prevention Packaging Act of 1970, or they can completely forget to take their medicine at all. As a result, a caretaker is usually necessary to aid the elderly and the disabled in accessing their medication and maintaining their intake schedule. In hospitals, nursing homes, or some private homes, supervision and help are automatically provided by professional staff or able family members. However, this care can be inadequate or completely absent if the patients live alone or are visited infrequently by others. For whatever reason, failure to adhere to the prescription may at best slow recovery or allow a condition to go unchecked, or at worst it could be fatal.
These problems have prompted the development of various devices which attempt to provide solutions. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,573,606 to Lewis et al. (1986) and 4,674,651 to Scidmore et al. (1987) show carousal pill dispensers with audio and visual alarms. Because these machines have enough capacity for only one day's supply of medication, they must be refilled daily by caretakers. U.S. Pat. No. 4,911,327 to Shepherd et al. (1990) shows a highly programmable device with multiple carousals, each of which holds one type of medicine. Although highly useful, the pill containers of this device have no locking mechanisms, therefore they are easily accessible by children. Moreover, it is highly complicated and therefore quite expensive to manufacture. As such, it is intended mainly for institutional use.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,563,410 to Murray (1971) shows a device with multiple, manually and independently operated dispensers. U.S. Pat. No. 3,752,359 to Shaw (1973) shows a device with manually operated sliding drawers which extract pills or pill bottles from magazines. Neither of these devices have a programmable timer or safety lockout, while both rely entirely on the user's ability to remember the proper dosage and schedule.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,731,765 to Cole et al. (1988) shows a programmable timer with pill receptacles for holding individual pills. Sensors in each receptacle detect the removal of the pills for triggering the timing interval. As such, this device can only hold pills of a predetermined physical size and shape, while it is limited to a single timing interval. Furthermore, although a solenoid operated latch mechanism safely locks the cabinet door until the set time is reached, presumably as a child proof measure, it is easily defeated by a front mounted and therefore plainly accessible override switch.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,369,697 to Glucksman et al. (1968) shows a timer operated medicine dispenser which automatically releases pill boxes from a tall, lockable magazine. Because the sealed magazine provides no external indication of its capacity, the machine can run out of medicine without warning. In addition, the padlocked magazine can prevent emergency access to the medicine in-between their timed releases if the key is lost.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,872,591 to Konopka (1989) shows a medicine dispenser with multiple magazines. One magazine will automatically dispense canisters once per day, another twice per day, another three times per day, etc. Because the magazines dispense canisters at different frequencies, some will be emptied days sooner than others, so that the dispenser could necessitate daily reloading. Moreover, the mechanical timing mechanism which controls the dispensing operations is inflexible: The dispensing intervals of each magazine are equal and fixed, so that it cannot be adjusted to take into account the long sleeping hours at night.
In conclusion, the references show devices which are either limited in capacity, expensive and complicated, lacking in flexibility to hold pills of different shapes, allow children easy access to their contents, cannot accurately and automatically dispense different medicines at different intervals, or can potentially lock out authorized users in emergencies.